Pair of Dayak Solid Brass Pendant Ear Ornaments

This pair of ear pendants weighs almost 200g each (or 400g overall). Such a weight is also unusually high for these. Each has been cast from solid brass.

Ear pendants of this weight allowed male and female Dayak tribes-people to stretch their earlobes to beyond their shoulders. This pair came from Sarawak, on the Malaysian side of the island of Borneo, but Dayak groups in Kalimantan on the Indonesian side also used such ear pendants.

Ear ornaments of brass were signs of prestige and power.

Earrings of this size and weight would have been reserved for a person of great prestige. They would have been used to stretch the ear lobes to a remarkable length. Thereafter, great care was needed to prevent the ear lobe from breaking. Women tended to stretch their ear lobes much more than men: it was considered effeminate for a Dayak man to have lobes stretched beyond the shoulders. Today, the practice of elongating the earlobes has largely died out among the Dayaks.

See Rodgers (1995, p. 280) and Carpenter (2011, p. 155) for related pairs.

The examples here are in excellent condition and have a good ‘feel’ in the hand.